Nanowire light emitting diodes (LED) are of increasing interest as an alternative to planar LEDs. In comparison with LEDs produced with conventional planar technology, nanowire LEDs offer unique properties due to the one-dimensional nature of the nanowires, improved flexibility in materials combinations due to less lattice matching restrictions and opportunities for processing on larger substrates.
Contacting of the nanowire LEDs requires new routes — compared to planar technology. Since nanowire LEDs comprise large arrays of nanowires, thereby forming a three-dimensional surface with high aspect ratio structures, deposition of contact material using line-of-sight processes is a challenging operation, and alternative methods of forming contacts would be useful.